jf@ap.co.umist.ac.uk (John Forrest) (04/27/91)
We have access to a colour laserprinter, which is attached to a VMS VAX, and which is accessed via ftp. The basic problem we have is the VMS spooler on this machine has a line limit of 80 characters (!!). The system programmers for this machine do have a program to help get round this - it adjusts postscript so that the lines are less that 80 characters long [I don't think it is very complicated (:], but this cannot cope with strings longer than 80 characters. The problem? Well the LaserPrep for the 6.? driver (v70 I believe) has a load of hex strings at the top, which are much longer than 80 characters. For us to procede, we need a way of breaking these up. Any suggestions, or alternative ideas, would be appreciated. When (if?) we get this working, we plan to set it up so that a CAP lswrv is provided which will pick up the (hopefully) modified laserprep, feed it through the 80 char conversion program, and then ftp the given data. We have already downloaded the new laserprep onto the CAP host, and it seems to work fine - on our b/w laser that is. John Forrest, Dept of Computation UMIST
zben@ni.umd.edu (Ben Cranston) (04/29/91)
In article <1991Apr27.130313.29659@cns.umist.ac.uk> jf@ap.co.umist.ac.uk (John Forrest) writes: > We have access to a colour laserprinter, which is attached to a > VMS VAX, and which is accessed via ftp. The basic problem we > have is the VMS spooler on this machine has a line limit of 80 > characters (!!). The system programmers for this machine do > have a program to help get round this - it adjusts postscript > so that the lines are less that 80 characters long [I don't > think it is very complicated (:], but this cannot cope with > strings longer than 80 characters. The problem? Well the > LaserPrep for the 6.? driver (v70 I believe) has a load of hex > strings at the top, which are much longer than 80 characters. > For us to procede, we need a way of breaking these up. > Any suggestions, or alternative ideas, would be appreciated. The long lines of hexadecimal are actually 68000 machine language programs. The one near the top is a patch for a particular revision of a particular Apple printer type, if you don't have one of these you can take it out. The two big hex blocks near the bottom are a "stretch" routine and a "smooth4" routine. Again, unless the printer is 68000-based these routines are never used. Also, the hex scanner should ignore whitespace, so you should be able to break these lines up in any convenient way (though for safety's sake I would break them at byte boundaries...) to fit within 80 characters. It might even work if you were to find them in the LaserPrep resource file and put in explicit newline characters...
jj1h+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Joseph Jackson) (04/29/91)
Excerpts from netnews.comp.protocols.appletalk: 27-Apr-91 Modifying 6.? LaserPrep for.. John Forrest@ap.co.umist (1106) > We have access to a colour laserprinter, which is attached to a > VMS VAX, and which is accessed via ftp. The basic problem we > have is the VMS spooler on this machine has a line limit of 80 > characters (!!). The system programmers for this machine do > have a program to help get round this - it adjusts postscript > so that the lines are less that 80 characters long If you're using a standard VMS symbiont to drive your printer, then you can configure it to allow very long lines. The problem is the /FORM specified for the PostScript printer's queue. I've found that many of DEC's standard installation kits apply a form specifying line truncation after 132 characters. It's simple to fix by defining a new form and correcting the INITIALIZE/QUEUE/FORM=whatever command invoked at system startup time. Here's the form I use: $ SHOW/QUEUE/FULL/FORM CANT_TOUCH_THIS Form name Number Description --------- ------ ----------- CANT_TOUCH_THIS (stock=DEFAULT) 500 No wrapping or truncation of lines /LENGTH=66 /STOCK=DEFAULT /WIDTH=65535 The queue JOSHUA is using this form: $ SHOW QUEUE/FULL JOSHUA Printer queue JOSHUA, on SOFLIB::NLP1:"128.2.45.10/joshua", mounted form CANT_TOUCH_THIS (stock=DEFAULT) /BASE_PRIORITY=4 /DEFAULT=(FEED,FORM=CANT_TOUCH_THIS (stock=DEFAULT)) /LIBRARY=MSAP$DEVCTL /OWNER=[SYSTEM] /PROCESSOR=MULTINET_LPD_SYMBIONT /PROTECTION=(S:E,O:D,G:R,W:W) If this seems to be the problem and you need more information, let me know and I'll elaborate. Good luck. Joe Jackson Distributed Workstation Services Carnegie Mellon University Internet: jj1h+@andrew.cmu.edu Bitnet: jj1h+@ANDREW AT&Tnet: (412) 268-8799